We're working on some remote disaster recovery planning (budgets, estimates, etc.) and while being somewhat familiar with the products and technology, I only know enough to be dangerous - I don't know enough to really make a good plan.

With that being said, I do know enough to know that we will be migrating to a SAN-based solution from our one-off server solution we have now. Currently our servers are all one-off Dell servers in a rack at a data center, mostly being Hyper-V VMs. We will be migrating to a SAN-based storage solution (still Hyper-V) with a remote SAN-to-SAN replication to a remote data center (several states away). The cost of a SAN implementation will be significantly cheaper in the long run than a Double Take-like solution, so we won't go that route.

Lastly, we do not currently have the talent in-house for this but we will be hiring a qualified infrastructure person for this to help us finalize plans and implement it and maintain it (among other things).

What our big question right now is what SAN hardware/platforms should we be looking at for making budgets and estimates? The prices of these things range from ~$10 to over $100k per device so that makes it hard coming up with a solid estimate. I know the answer is always "it depends", so let me try and provide some additional information to help:

Primary site needs to be high performance. We're not talking SSDs but 10k or 15k SAS drives (although not high enough to justify many 74GB drives over fewer 450GB drives).

The secondary/remote site does not have this high performance requirement - we can use 7200rpm SATA drives there. It does, however, need to have ~2.2x the effective storage that the primary site has so we can perform disaster simulates without interrupting the synchronization process. I say "effective storage" because I understand some platforms by default require ~2x the storage of the primary SAN which means this might need ~3-4x the storage to perform disaster simulations.

I suspect we could get by with ~3-4TB on the primary end for now but I want to make sure it's easily/efficiently expandable in the future.

Having tiered storage at the primary end could save us some money if it's easy to implement. We have some high-throughput VMs (SQL) and some very low-throughput VMs as well (passive failover servers, health monitoring servers, active directory, etc.). At the secondary end, it's okay for everything to be low-tiered (i.e. large SATA drives, still need RAIDed though).

So far I've looked at EqualLogic and while their products are pricey (~$75k for a 9.6TB PS6000XV array), I could justify the cost if that's what we need. However, at the same time, I don't want to waste money if we can get something else just as good for us at a lower cost. I just don't know.

Also, another question. The way Dell prices their EqualLogic setups, they charge ~$1.5k for a 600GB 10k SAS drive, ~$1.8k for a 1TB 7200 SATA drive, and ~$2k for a 15k SAS drive (I judge this by the difference in prices between an option with 8x vs 16x drives in an array that has 16 bays). That sounds to me like I'm being ripped off if I pay that. Should I consider an EqualLogic setup but where I acquire the drives from another vendor?

Again, I realize I don't know enough to make this plan complete but I need to know enough to at least come up with a reasonable estimate for the hardware and I already have an estimate for the additional salary.

40 Replies

We were almost a 100% Dell shop (save a few RISC and AS/400 machines) until we went through a similar process. We ended up looking at Dell EqualLogic, EMC, IBM, HP, and other smaller vendors for SANs. We went with IBM in the log run.

I would definitely take a look at other vendors, though. You may be surprised!

Sorry TM-IT, but I would have to disagree with your Cybernetics suggestion. Our D2D2T system is Cybernetics and it's been nothing but issues. Our SAN decides to show an error on the front panel LED, constantly beeping, but the software is convinced nothing's wrong. Cybernetics want's us to send it back to them--essentially disabling our backups completely for at least a week.

Opie7423: What are the odds that you got a bad unit (the SAN, not tape)? If the Cybernetics equipment is only 1/5th the cost of the Dell equipment, we can certainly afford to keep replacement units on hand and roll them in and out via their live fail-over functionality. That said, I do realize this is not equipment to skimp out on. But on the other hand, even the best stuff sometimes fails. I remember once having a $25k PowerEdge that was delivered DOA 3 different times before Dell finally got it right. Ever since then (and the extreme inconvenience that caused by pushing a project back ~2 weeks because of the DOAs and wasted time), I've decided it's not always worth paying 2-4x's extra for the "name brand".

Opie7423: What are the odds that you got a bad unit (the SAN, not tape)? If the Cybernetics equipment is only 1/5th the cost of the Dell equipment, we can certainly afford to keep replacement units on hand and roll them in and out via their live fail-over functionality. That said, I do realize this is not equipment to skimp out on. But on the other hand, even the best stuff sometimes fails. I remember once having a $25k PowerEdge that was delivered DOA 3 different times before Dell finally got it right. Ever since then (and the extreme inconvenience that caused by pushing a project back ~2 weeks because of the DOAs and wasted time), I've decided it's not always worth paying 2-4x's extra for the "name brand".

We may have; the point is that their support has been less than helpful. I understand that all devices fail--one thing we were taught to say when I worked at Radio Shack is "Even Rolls Royce has a service department". First impressions are the strongest, though; so because of that I would be surprised if we went with Cybernetics again in the future.

We may have; the point is that their support has been less than helpful. I understand that all devices fail--one thing we were taught to say when I worked at Radio Shack is "Even Rolls Royce has a service department". First impressions are the strongest, though; so because of that I would be surprised if we went with Cybernetics again in the future.

Fair enough. I agree with you (I think) - their support folks should have shipped you out a unit to replace your existing unit so you didn't have downtime imho.

This is an interesting (and fairly difficult problem :) This is what I can tell you if you buy an EqualLogic SAN

For a small to medium business they are excellent! They have great performance and are drop dead simple to manage! They will let you borrow one so take it for a spin, they sell themselves. They also have excellent support.

Now, one of their current weaknesses is in replication. It is dead easy to setup and fast but it is very 'chatty'

That is a good post to read. Now, EqualLogic has purchased a dedupe company so I expect that to be rolled in pretty soon so that could start changing things... but basically you need to know how much change you will be sending over your WAN. You didn't mention how far between sites and what your data pipe is. I have seen schools that have fiber available between sites or (100 mb) intercity links work pretty well with equallogic. Sql databases and exchange tend to change blocks all over the place causing a lot of data to be replicated. Some technologies that you can explore are some WAN optimization such as Riverbed, and maybe look into veeam? It all comes down to how much change, how big of a pipe, and how often you need to replicate!

But, we have been very happy with our Equallogic SAN. It is extremely user friendly, and we just let it work its magic!

For distance, we're talking ~600-1000 miles. The pipe will be whatever it needs to be but we're being told that our initial needs will be taken care of by a 5mbps pipe (while we have lots of data, we have a small number of users and often idle systems). With this, we're told we should be able to keep things in sync near real-time. Whether this happens real-time (I'm told it probably can't) or is batched every 5-15 minutes, it's not that big of a deal. Just as long as we don't get too far behind. Luckily, if we do, we can always just increase our pipe - it's fairly cheap to do so.

How many VM's and what size of Databases or exchange? And how much change would you estimate... although this is almost impossible to guestimate? Really you need to get 2 SAN's and do a local replication in order to see how much will be replicated, unfortunately you would have to migrate to the EqualLogic b4 to test it out. I'm slightly amused that they think 5mbps will do the trick (but I don't know your environment)

How many VM's and what size of Databases or exchange? And how much change would you estimate... although this is almost impossible to guestimate? Really you need to get 2 SAN's and do a local replication in order to see how much will be replicated, unfortunately you would have to migrate to the EqualLogic b4 to test it out. I'm slightly amused that they think 5mbps will do the trick (but I don't know your environment)

Hmmm I think you might be able to get away with that. I would really recommend getting it on the SAN and then seeing how much change you actually generate. SQL is notorious for creating 'dirty pages' all over the place. If you go this route definitely let me know how it turns out!

I compared EqualLogic to LeftHand networks (now HP) and went with LH. Very similar in ease of setup. I think the LH has some strong points, or did, but mainly I was already using LH and familiarity with the product swayed my decision.

If I had to do it again, or I needed more storage, I would definitely roll my own with the SAM-SD, HP server with OpenFiler or FreeNAS. If I had to replicate I would do the same thing but with someone like Niagara Technology assisting with the config for the replication.

My SAN requires no maintenance from me on any kind of regular basis, nor did it when I was replicating over a T1 between sites. As always YMMV but I don't know that hiring someone just to implement and maintain this will be necessary.

I compared EqualLogic to LeftHand networks (now HP) and went with LH. Very similar in ease of setup. I think the LH has some strong points, or did, but mainly I was already using LH and familiarity with the product swayed my decision.

If I had to do it again, or I needed more storage, I would definitely roll my own with the SAM-SD, HP server with OpenFiler or FreeNAS. If I had to replicate I would do the same thing but with someone like Niagara Technology assisting with the config for the replication.

My SAN requires no maintenance from me on any kind of regular basis, nor did it when I was replicating over a T1 between sites. As always YMMV but I don't know that hiring someone just to implement and maintain this will be necessary.

I appreciate the information and your experiences with EqualLogic vs LH, and everything else.

Niagara Technology - can you give me more information on this?

SAM-SD - it's my understanding that these are no longer possible because they're based on a server that is no longer available. Am I mistaken?

Great info, it's a bit hard creating your own bespoke solution if you're already saturated with work, hence trying to find a solution that works well with little or no maintenance (as you have kindly described)

I don't doubt that the products are good, but they are expensive. I know Spiceworks reaches outside the normal SMB boundaries but I wouldn't expect to see many companies here using NetApp or EMC. In my opinion these are up a level (in cost at least) from the EqualLogic and Hp SAN's that we discuss.

I don't doubt that the products are good, but they are expensive. I know Spiceworks reaches outside the normal SMB boundaries but I wouldn't expect to see many companies here using NetApp or EMC. In my opinion these are up a level (in cost at least) from the EqualLogic and Hp SAN's that we discuss.

I never thought of that. Since Spiceworks is a free product, it's probably used by SMBs who look for value efficiency over the number of nines in the uptime guarantees. That makes sense.